


the art of drowning

by namio



Series: we don't have to be pyrrhic victories [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: A character that's kind of supposed to be Britannia but also not really, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Dysfunctional Family, Families of Choice, I cant believe i'm ficcing something not arago, M/M, Might add other ships later as I go, Slow Burn, basically: self indulgent spies au, dont kill me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 02:37:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6176839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namio/pseuds/namio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur Kirkland had been in the business for eight years, three months and three weeks when it happened.</p><p>“International cooperation,” Jernigan said. “Don’t strangle him.”</p><p>Arthur questioned the comment the entire time prior to his meeting with said partner. The question promptly evaporated the second he met him.</p><p>He was French. Painfully so.</p><p>“Bonjour,” Francis Bonnefoy said, all smirks and coy confidence, and Arthur Kirkland barely managed to grit out, “Git.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. initial impact

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what I'm doing.  
> This is my first time writing these two.  
> I'm sorry.

Arthur Kirkland had been in the business for eight years, three months and three weeks when it happened.

“International cooperation,” Jernigan said. “Don’t strangle him.”

Arthur questioned the comment the entire time prior to his meeting with said partner. The question promptly evaporated the second he met him.

He was French. Painfully so.

“ _Bonjour_ ,” Francis Bonnefoy said, all smirks and coy confidence, and Arthur Kirkland barely managed to grit out, “Git.”

* * *

 Arthur knew he had a temper.

That much was evident to anyone with functioning eyes. It was the first thing Jernigan had him control when she first picked him up—she was a lot like a mother to him that way, except she sent him to missions to retrieve classified information and get shot at. “There’s no being soft in this line of work, Kirkland, but there’s no place for mindless fury either,” she had said. Arthur, then nineteen and recently left his shit-arse brother and sister, wiped the blood off his chin and nodded.

A lot of people questioned her decision then, but not any longer. He didn’t have a knack for science and some had the gall to call him a twig, once, but he did took a page from history and did what England did best: weave words and conquer.

It worked.

And like England, he did what it had always done: hate the French.

“ _Bon sang! Mais tu vas te calmer oui_?“ Bonnefoy flipped to the next page of his _art press_ as he clicked his tongue. The family sitting across them bickered with each other, the mother swatting her children’s arms as they tried to hit each other across her. Arthur reread the articles on his newspaper for the third time this flight. “You’re acting like a caged coq.”

The boy sitting on the outer-most seat perked up—the mother glared at him. Bonnefoy rolled his eyes, then smiled his best Sunday, church-going smile.

“It’s such a long flight, isn’t it?

As he was forced to distract the family from the fact that he said “cock” in public, Arthur snorted and re-re-re-read his newspaper with renewed vigour. Contrary to popular belief, hate wasn’t a bad fuel at all—if anything, Arthur had learned his entire life that hate was the fire that burned the longest.

* * *

 There was a time where Arthur saw fairies and unicorns—the full monty, really. He was a lad saddled with a bunch of arseholes to call brothers. On good days, Alistair only settled on calling him ‘bastard’ and calling their unknown father ‘the bastard son of a whore’. On bad days, there was a storm of words and fists so violent in a three by three confined room that Arthur would rather entertain the thought of sleeping in a fairy ring than to stay.

He won his first fistfight at age 12, and had two people to thank for it.

Usually Dylan just sat off to the side, next to him. He was a full year younger than Arthur, but learned to stay still and keep his mouth shut. It was a lesson Arthur learned years too late.  But, when he was too new to this world to know any better, he saw fairies and unicorns and befriended them.

It was years later that he found out that fairies and unicorns were, in fact, horrifying. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but Brighid did always say that he wasn’t quite right in the head.

“At least their horrors are fictional,” Dylan once said as Brighid and Alistair went at it again. “I’d trade anything to make this fictional.”

That night, Arthur found out that he had quite a gift for words. At the very least, it made Dylan smile a bit, the stories about fairies and unicorns. Years later, Arthur convinced a powerful, influential gang leader into stopping some parts of her criminal activity with a long talk over tea and a laser point of a sniper rifle on the back of his head, and they kept him at field work.

* * *

 He had to admit, though—at least Bonnefoy had an acceptable capacity for pain.

“Took you long enough,” Bonnefoy spat out with the blood, eyes bleary and swollen. His wrists were chaffed and red and his gait was as crooked as the chair he was bound to moments prior—one leg broken off, which Arthur used to knock out one of the grunts—but he buttoned up his cuffs and straightened up his back anyway.

“Did you get the coordinates?” Arthur said instead, picking up the piece of wood and rolling up the sleeves of his sweater. In hindsight, that was probably the core difference between them—Arthur broke loose in anger. Francis became a guided missile.

“Of course, _mon cher_. Who do you take me for?” Bonnefoy showed his row of bloodied teeth, and Arthur scoffed.

“A Frenchman.” A short, derisive snort. “Come on, let’s get moving.”

Bonnefoy made a spectacle out of fixing his collar, stained with spit and blood and sweat. Sometimes it made him want to bark out, ‘who is it you want to impress? What is it you want to prove?’ but he never did voice it in the end, because really, he didn’t care. As much as he hated working with Bonnefoy, what mattered the most was whether he was competent at his job or not. So far, he hadn’t given him any reason to complain in the professional sense.

“They’re already on the way here with a car,” Arthur said as they left the ruined building. It said a lot when they had to hop over dead bodies as they ran down the halls, soles of their shoes almost always leaving thin outlines in red. “Backup. You spent too long getting tortured.”

Bonnefoy laughed, a thin, light sound that grated at something in this chest. “Of course, _mon cher_.”

The thought was fleeting, but Arthur swore that if _that_ became Bonnefoy’s catchphrase, he’d deck him.

* * *

 There were only a precious few individuals who managed to worm their way to his heart: Dylan, Jernigan, and a pair of twins from the US who had a baffling loyalty to each other.

Oh, they fought a lot. But—“Just because I fight with him now and then doesn’t mean that I want him dead, you know,” Matthew said, and it kind of, sort of, reminded him of Dylan. He hadn’t talked to Dylan in four years. He was the only one Arthur bothered to contact back then, but it seemed like now he lost them all. He’d still call him an ally, though. Maybe they wouldn’t really go to the ends of hell to help each other out, but at least they’d help each other when they were within reach.

“How did both of you end up here, anyway?” Arthur said. Alfred’s eyebrows rose.

“We’ve only got each other left,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“You could’ve ended on the opposite sides of the battlefield.”

Alfred scoffed. “Not gonna happen.”

Funny, because sometimes Arthur knocked out a redhead with a plank of wood they tied him up to and thought about Alistair. Considering his personality, he’d probably end up like them, should he be roped into this entire business—anger exploited and being turned into a grunt, acting only on base emotions with its shades of pissed off. Brighid, well—they don’t tend to hire women as grunt, he noticed, but she’d probably fare just fine in the same fate.

They’d probably end up on opposite sides, with Alistair and Brighid blissfully ignorant of each other’s existence despite being in the same faction.

It was probably messed up that he could think of his siblings on the other side of the battlefield and feel nothing. Alistair and Brighid might have raised Dylan and him, but only by the thinnest thread. They mostly barely kept the roof over their heads, working odd jobs to pay for rent. Sometimes they got enough for actual groceries. The rest of their existence in his mind was just shouts and slammed doors.

“We owe you one,” Matthew said, Canadian accent thick in his tongue. His rifle was slung haphazardly over his back and his lips were a grim line, but there was a warm sheen to his eyes that Arthur wasn’t familiar with. “If you ever end up at this side of the pond again, don’t hesitate to call us. Our place is always open to you.”

Alfred grinned, a lopsided, too wide thing that made him look more fifteen than twenty three. “Yeah. You saved our asses, after all.”

Arthur wasn’t really a big fan of leaving England, especially when it didn’t have the ‘must’ that was inherent to missions, but for exactly three minutes, he considered the idea.

“Sure,” he settled on instead. The matching beams he got from the two were almost blinding.

What a strange pair.

* * *

And the reason why Arthur wandered down that particular line of thought was because here those two were, in a jeep, waving at them.

“Arthur, Francis!” Matthew called out from the driver’s seat. It was kind of strange, seeing him without his rifle. Alfred, on the other hand, had one. Arthur hoped the two had more firearms, though—he ran out of bullets trying to get Bonnefoy out, and while usually he could make do, it was a bit harder when he had to get other people out, too. Especially when they were limping.

“Mathieu, Alfred,” Bonnefoy said, voice tinted with joy that made Arthur stop.

“Wait, what?”

“No time to chat, get on,” Matthew said, completed immediately by Alfred saying, “We’ll talk in the car.”

So Arthur kept it shut until he got in, Bonnefoy limping in afterwards. Arthur would’ve felt bad, but he’d seen worse. He had a tendency to rile up his captors quite often, himself—in comparison, Bonnefoy got off quite easy, getting punishments only because he’s a spy, and not because he mocked their existence.

Jernigan always said that he’ll grow out of it. At age 27, Arthur still didn’t see the light.

“First things first,” Arthur said, leaning forward, “you two know this frog?”

Matthew snorted, and Alfred had the nerve to laugh. The car accelerated suddenly and it was only belatedly that Arthur heard the gunshot just behind them. “I knew it—two bucks, Mattie.”

“Oh please, that’s not even a bet worth taking,” Matthew said, taking a turn so sharply Francis slammed straight to his side. He kicked back the urge to kick him and gritted his teeth instead, relishing the sharp intake of air from the frog. “Sorry dads. Hold on tight.”

The string of gunshots that followed them almost concealed Alfred’s guffaws—and subsequent crashing against his brother due to his loss of grip--, but Arthur didn’t forget things like that.

And neither did Bonnefoy, it seemed, because once they got out of range, the conversation immediately made a return.

“So you two know him?” Bonnefoy started. Arthur made a noise—unwilling to echo his question and yet wanting to know the answer to the reverse, too.

“Yeah, we met a while ago,” Matthew said. “Got us out of trouble several times. Three times? Four?”

“Five,” Arthur said. This information just made him wonder what endeared them to him—they were a bunch of walking trouble. If they were any younger, Arthur would’ve left them in their own shit.

“You never did come visit us though,” Alfred said, tone just short of whining.

“You’re not kids anymore,” Arthur said.

“ _And_ ,” Matthew cut in, accentuating his voice with a sharp turn, “we met Francis a while back, too. Information gathering. Three times. Taught us quite a few things, too. We kept in touch, though—it’s a bit harder to keep in touch with you, I noticed.”

Arthur only raised an eyebrow. “I don’t usually keep in touch with anyone.”

Case and point, Dylan. Arthur conceded that he was a shit awful brother, but eh—in a way, he wouldn’t be surprised if Dylan had a better life without his brothers and sister around. Things sure did get better for Arthur without Alistair and Brighid around. Last time Arthur saw him, he was a music teacher in some school in Wales. Good for him.

“We noticed,” Matthew said, tone dry. “Anyway, where are we supposed to go again?”

As Francis rattled off the coordinates, Arthur wondered if he should call Dylan after this. He never really liked calling anybody—his dry tone tended to come off as crass without body language speaking otherwise.

Still. Maybe it’d be worth it.

* * *

 They stayed at a small, shady motel. The front desk accepted small bribes to shut up about the fact that Bonnefoy looked like he just escaped a gang fight and the fact that _he_ looked like he pummelled someone in that gang fight, and didn’t even comment on the rifles the twins brought. It’s amazing, how money made the world go round.

“But there are only two rooms—one with a double bed and one with two single beds.”

“We’ll take the double bed,” Alfred cut in, eyeing him and Bonnefoy. “I don’t think we need to put you through that kind of torture.”

Matthew nodded as though he was agreeing to something very wise.

Bonnefoy sighed in an overly dramatic fashion, but it fell and revealed a small, weak smile. “Thank you for the consideration.”

 

The room wasn’t a hellhole, and that was enough, Arthur supposed.

“They really skimp out on everything,” Francis said, dropping into one of the beds. “This is just putting a damper on my already bad mood.”

“Just deal with it,” Arthur bit out. “It’s not like we’ll be staying here for more than a day.”

They’d have to move out soon, after some sleep. Matthew was a good driver, even when he was approaching twenty six hours without sleep, but he needed to get some shut eye after a while if they didn’t want to crash. He asked why the two of them didn’t switch, but apparently they both had been awake for roughly the same hours. Twins.

“I suppose you have a point,” Bonnefoy sighed out, spreading on his bed as he did so. “I’m beat.”

“You were.”

“Haha. Very funny.”

Arthur only lied back on his bed and closed his eyes. Bonnefoy’s breathing took up space in the silence, laboured and short, and suddenly Arthur remembered the few times he came back all bruised and fresh from a fight, and Dylan kicked him out of their shared bedroom to sleep in the couch. “I don’t need you to start fighting either, Arthur. Two was enough.”

He had to admit—he stopped getting into that much fights after that. He didn’t have grand ideas like not turning out like his siblings, like being an antithesis to them, but he didn’t want to turn out exactl like them either. At least he had Dylan to remind him.

Not that he liked spending the night on the couch. He had to wake up early just to avoid Alistair and Brighid, who would probably do something while he was asleep just to make a point.

“I don’t think I’ve ever shared a room with a separate bed before,” Bonnefoy said. Arthur scrunched up his nose.

“I don’t need to know that particular information. That’s just disgusting.”

There was a silence before Bonnefoy burst out laughing. “Here I thought you were a prude. No, I mean—I’ve never had to share a room with someone like this before. I’m an only child, so the room was all mine.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow, letting his hand fall off to his side. He needed to sleep and be at his best next morning, but sleep was eluding him. “Why are you telling me this?”

Bonnefoy hummed. “I don’t know. To fill in the silence?”

“Now I know that you’re not lying about that only child part,” Arthur replied dryly. “Get a brother. You’ll soon realise how much you’ll want to be an only child then.”

And pray said brother wasn’t like Alistair. Arthur hated Bonnefoy for being obnoxious and French, but he reserved such curses to people who led international human trafficking rings, like the bloke they were trying to get in this mission. As apathetic as Arthur could be, he didn’t enter this line of job for the adrenaline. There was still a small fragment in him that wanted good in this world.

Though then again, having a brother like Alistair probably _led_ to people leading international human trafficking rings. He was being harsh to his brother, perhaps. But eh. It wasn’t like Alistair was any better.

“I don’t know,” Bonnefoy said, voice tinged with sleepiness. The painkillers he took was probably taking effect now. “It does sound nice, not having to face silence every night.”

Arthur waited until Bonnefoy’s breathing completely evened out before relaxing back on his own pillow. He had to agree—at least when things weren’t silent outside, he knew what storm was going on between Alistair and Brighid. An enemy with a form was always better than the what if’s.

* * *

 The mission was a great success.

“Kirkland? Kirkland, can you hear me? Kirkland, answer.” The comm buzzed on and on, but the crackle blurred the words. Or was it him? That was Jernigan on the line, he was pretty sure—it was hard to not recognise the sharpness in her words, the way it can curl just this side of savage and yet stay calm at the same time. Francis pressed his palms against the hole in his stomach, something that sent fire through his leaking bloodstreams and a groan out of his trembling lips. “We’re sending medics. ETA 15 minutes. Can you stay alive long enough? Answer.”

“Yes, he will,” Francis gritted out in his place. “I swear to high heavens he will.”

Arthur cracked a smile and succumbed to the hellfire in his blood.

* * *

 But rewind.


	2. inertial descent

It started out smoothly enough.

“We’re killing him, right?” Bonnefoy said as he cocked his gun. Matthew and Alfred were rounding up the group of people who they freed from their handlers and were herding them to the car, for safety, and Arthur felt the burn of righteous anger creeping into the back of his mind. He could tell that Francis felt the same, too, and the way he jammed his gun back to its place harder than he ought to told him everything. “The answer better be yes.”

“He’s supposed to be taken back alive,” Arthur said. Then he grinned—an ugly thing, all teeth and menace. “But they won’t regret much if we lose him through circumstances.”

They’d probably get reprimanded, but at this point, Arthur found it a bit hard to care. Sometimes he called himself a pessimist, apathetic, but when faced with _this_ , he found out just how much he actually cared about making things right in this damn world. Most of the time being good was helping people cross the roads and saying thanks to retail workers. Sometimes, it’s getting rid of a bastard for good.

“Are you guys ready?” Matthew said, coming over with his rifle in his hands. “They’re sending over some guys to pick up the folks, so Alfred and I will be joining you.”

“No,” Arthur said, sharp.

Matthew frowned. Even such a harsh expression looked tame on his face—it sent a pang of an almost-unfamiliar protectiveness into his chest. “We’re here as backup, Arthur, not as some kids who are tagging along. Alfred and I _are_ full-fledged agents. You’re walking into the enemy’s nest, where they’re ready to do anything to protect the target. We’re already in their radar for freeing these people. Keeping us away because of some twisted instinct is frankly just illogical.”

Arthur didn’t count on Matthew catching on to his stupid protective feelings for the two of them, but said nothing. Francis’ expression was almost cold.

“You said it yourself. You’re here as backup, so you should come in when we needed the help. Not to mention, slipping in will be far easier if there’s just the two of us. Someone needs to stay ready in the car in case we need a quick escape.”

Matthew held Francis’ gaze for minutes before finally narrowing his eyes and nodding. “Fine. Be careful in there.”

Francis’ smile tasted like the one Arthur always plastered on when he told Dylan he’d take care of Alistair and Brighid whenever they fought. It was those ineffective reassurances, done more out of need than to reassure.

Arthur was suddenly hit by the thought that perhaps, he could get along with this Frenchman.

“Thanks,” Arthur said, readying his gun. “We’ll keep in touch once we’re inside.”

Matthew’s gaze was hard on his back as they walked away, but Arthur felt no regret leaving them behind. Attachments: what a weakness.

* * *

 The location of the target was an old mansion tucked in the past—that was, the building had been built in the middle of a fairly large garden, and it was just far enough for them to be spotted as they approach it. It seemed that the locals knew that something was up here, too, though—most people eyed them as they approached, but nobody stopped them. Some even shook their heads. At least their target didn’t have a good reputation here—it was hard to fend off civilians who thought that they were attacking good people.

With a nod to each other, they ran across the yard.

Things after that was a blur of shouts, shots and narrowly avoiding death. Arthur punched someone right behind Francis as the latter shot someone creeping up to him and they worked their way up, knowing that Matthew and Alfred already covered the other exits should the target try to get away. There weren’t many people here, though, naturally—they couldn’t attract too much attention, and though they were anticipating them after that stunt they pulled off earlier, there were still only less than a dozen people in the first two floors.

They were severely outnumbered, but they’ve both pulled through worse.

“Behind you,” Francis hissed as Arthur turned around, but he moved too late—a punch connected to the side of his head and probably cracked the bones underneath, and Arthur could feel the concealed speaker and microphone dislodging from his ear. For a split second he could hear Alfred’s alarmed calls, but the noise soon disappeared as his brain burst into a jumble of nonsense and lights.

When his vision cleared up and he could hear again, the bloke who punched him was down, but another slammed Francis against a table with a porcelain vase and immediately probed his ear for a communication device. The vase tipped over and crashed, but Arthur winced instead at the grunt throwing a tiny, circular thing on the ground and grinding his foot on it, fist still clenched on Francis’ collar.

Arthur punched his face and kicked him in the stomach.

“You’re not all that used to fist fights, are you,” Arthur panted out as he held out a hand. Francis took it and got off the table, shaking his head.

“I have to admit I don’t. I tend to avoid fights in general.”

“Hah.” It didn’t cut like it usually would, though, and Francis had a small smile, edging on a friendly smirk.

“Shall we proceed?”

“Bring it on.”

The last flight of stairs felt long with anticipation, though Arthur couldn’t deny that tiredness affected it too. The grunts in this place were a tad smarter than usual—he noted that some tried to barricade the door amidst the chaos, trapping them inside. They knocked him out, of course, but they just had too many important things to do, and the thought of undoing it disappeared once they cleared out the room and headed for the next one. He was starting to feel a creeping regret at that, but they had no time for second guessing.

“Stay back,” he hissed at Francis.

As Arthur busted open the door to the last room, however, the sound of gunshot slammed into him.

As did the bullet.

It was instinct and adrenaline that made him fire another shot, but as someone shouted in pain, another burst of agony forced him to drop his gun. Francis fired five times.

It was all so bloody anticlimactic.

* * *

Just a few hours ago, he punched a bunch of numbers he hadn’t recited in a while.

“—t this hour—‘Ello?”

“Dylan,” Arthur said.

“Wha—huh? Arthur, that you?” Dylan’s voice was scratchy with sleep but the intonation sounded like he was more alert now. What was the time over there again? Crap. Arthur didn’t think that through—“The hell, Arthur? It’s been four years. Where have you been? Do you know how hard I tried to track you down? Nobody even knows you and I can’t exactly call Al or Bree, and you don’t even have friends I could call.”

Arthur winced through all that. “Sorry about that. Things got real busy.”

“Yeah yeah, busy taking down terrorists and all that,” Dylan said, dry as hardtack in the sun. “Don’t know why I expected much more.”

Arthur stayed silent, and then Dylan sighed.

“Sorry. It’s just. It’s been four years, and you didn’t contact me, _at all_. I had no idea what happened to you, and you could’ve been dead for all I know. I have the rights to freak out on you. That, and it’s three AM. Where in the hell are you, anyway?”

Arthur looked outside the window to the streetlight-bathed expanse of shoddy and crumbling rooftops and dusty streets and took in the sight. “In a city whose name I can’t pronounce. How are you today?”

He could hear people walking in the halls just outside, and contemplated ending the call. He wouldn’t, of course—Dylan would’ve hunted him through all nine circles of hell for that, and Arthur knew that he’d do it. Dylan’s _sigh_ managed to carry exasperation. He’d chuck a messenger pigeon through a hurricane to carry the rest of his annoyance if he had to.

Still. He didn’t really fancy the thought of Bonnefoy walking in on him having a chat with family.

“I’m doing good. Kids are insane, but I like teaching them. If you bother coming over here, I might even tell you about my love life. I’m thinking about proposing. No, I won’t tell you anything over the phone. I got a pet bunny and a cat. The rose bush you planted is in dire need of your magic. I kept your teapot warm for you.”

Arthur couldn’t help the smile creeping on his face and let the side of his head rest against the cool glass. “What did you do to my rose bush, you fiend?”

“I did nothing.”

“That’s exactly the problem.”

“Look, I’m not the one with the magic green fingers here. That, and my pet bunny might be a bit of the… explorative type. I named her Flying Mint Bunny. I wish that’s just a nickname and not literal. Well, she doesn’t _fly_ , per se, but she is mint—it’s a long story. Another reason you have to get your arse over here. I still need to kick it, you bastard.”

They talked even as Francis walked in, whistling. He paused at the doorstep for a moment before leaving again, a knowing smile on his face. Arthur only rolled his eyes and threw a crumpled paper at the closing door, the ball barely making a crinkling noise as it hit. Dylan heard the movement, though, and asked things.

Arthur felt the urge to indulge him, though he didn’t really get why. But he followed his gut anyway. It saved him many times, after all.

* * *

He woke up to plaster white ceiling, and he felt like he just subsisted on insect-filled hardtack for days.

“You’re awake.”

Now he felt like he was in a badly written, cliché novel with a hospital scene in it.

“What the…”

Alfred’s face hovered a good distance above his, while Matthew was a bit further away. Why were they here again? Arthur knew that he got hurt and that the boys probably ran to the location the second they lost contact, but why the hell were these two here again, he couldn’t remember. His ability to think was spotty right now, as was his memory. There was no pain, though. Arthur knew he was shot at least once. They got him the good drugs.

“Francis is out right now. I made him get himself some food, he’s been here the entire time.”

Arthur failed to comprehend that at the moment.

“What?”

Alfred moved back, though now a sympathetic smile was plastered on his less-cheerful face. His eyes were bogged down by the ring of darkened skin around it, and his eyes were a bit pink. Same with Matthew, though his longer hair fell on his face and lessened the look. Arthur wanted to groan and go back to sleep—this entire thing was horrible enough without _guilt_.

“Also,” Alfred said. “Your phone rang yesterday. It was from a Dylan.”

This time, Arthur _did_ groan and tried hard to go back to sleep.

He failed.

Francis came back with three cups of coffee, strong enough that Arthur could smell them even when he was still opening the door. It was almost _disgusting_. Arthur wouldn’t call himself a pure tea drinker—coffee had its benefits, namely caffeine—but the scent was strong enough he was jostled out of his fake sleep. Francis raised an eyebrow as he blearily opened his eyes.

“Why, morning, sunshine.”

“Call me sunshine again and I’ll show you pain where the sun doesn’t.”

“I see that you made a quick recovery.”

He placed the coffee on the table, where Matthew and Alfred took theirs and started pouring Things into them. Arthur really didn’t want to know. He always went with simplicity—an espresso with two sugars and a grimace. These two lads were adding things that went _beyond_ sugar. It was something he understood happened theoretically, but was not prepared to see with his own two eyes.

“So what happened?”

Francis eyed him. “You just woke up.”

“So?”

A sigh. “I shot him dead. The boys got in through the windows thanks to a barricade of two sofas and a table and a dining table on the back entrance. You got shot twice, one in the gut one grazed your shoulder. Mathieu left his communicator with us while they work on removing the barricade. You passed out then reawaken just to smile and fainted again.”

That wasn’t as bad as he thought. He’d gotten out of worse—a long week of torture, for example. It was one of the few things he’d categorise as being worse than his childhood. He still didn’t like talking about it, and it was one of those things the psych held over him whenever the time came for psych eval.

“That’s not so bad. What about Dylan?”

Francis sat down on the bed, right by his legs. The only reason why Arthur didn’t kick him off was because moving was too much a hassle. “He called because apparently he wanted to tell you that his bunny ate your roses, but he wasn’t pleased when he found out that you’re in the hospital for getting shot. I reckon this is the same person you were talking to before we left for the mission.”

Arthur shrugged the best he could in his condition. Though he didn’t really feel the pain from his wounds, they limited his movements with tight bandages. Sleep was creeping at the edges of his mind as well, as if things were catching up to him like a great tide that got dragged far back. “Yeah. I’d like to tell him that I’m roasting his bunny for daring to eat my roses.”

Those roses were his pride and joy. He hadn’t seen a rose garden in a very long time.

“You don’t even have the…”

As the other three conversed over him, Arthur fell back asleep.

* * *

“How are you still here, anyway?” Arthur asked, placing down his words on the Scrabble board. The hospital room felt a bit more… expansive and empty with the twins gone, recalled two days after he awoken. Apparently they spent the week they got free between missions at his bedside—a fact that only made him feel worse. They had winked and called him ‘dad’ just before they left. “I mean, there’s only so many days you can skip work.”

Francis raised his eyebrows real high. “Did you forget? We were assigned partners. As in, not just one mission.”

“Wait, what?”

“You didn’t listen, did you?”

Arthur frowned. “Maybe I was sparing myself from abject horror.”

He was sure that Jernigan said nothing of the sort. Perhaps she had used wording to imply it, but he recalled no extensive explanation. Why would they even have a permanent multinational collaboration team? Politics got messy all the time, and he didn’t see good come out of such an act in anything but temporary arrangements, agreed upon to deal with an international issue. Singular, mostly.

“I’ll let that slide for now,” Francis said. “In any case, we’re stuck together for quite some time, _mon cher_.”

He finished off the last of the shitty hospital cafeteria croissant and put the plate on the bedside table, next to the finished cup of shitty hospital tea Arthur asked for earlier. The bag was left in the cup for too long and since it was black tea, it just created a sludge of sharp burst of overwhelming flavour, and it was only out of his genuine love of tea that he finished it. At the very least, Francis looked as though he was suffering worse from the food.

“How long do I have to stay here again?” It had been almost two weeks, and he’d been bored enough that Francis scoured the city up and down for _something_ , and came back with a Scrabble board in Albanian. God knows where he actually found it, but Arthur wasn’t complaining. They had been playing it for days. Francis wasn’t really a good opponent, but at least he didn’t answer in Welsh like Dylan did. The games ended up with far too many vowels, thanks to the fact that _Welsh ate up almost all of their consonants_. “I swear if I have to stay for much longer, I might as well just get shot again to end it all.”

“You’re staying until the doctor gives you a yes, and I reckon that’s at least another week,” Francis said as he put down ZA. “Even then, you’ll probably still be confined to rest for at least another week.”

Arthur played QUETZALS. “Oh bugger.”

Francis shrugged, sipping his disgusting sludge of caffeine. “Trust me, I like it as much as you do. So try to get better quicker, _oui_? Save us all some grief.”

“Oh, bugger off, Frog.”

* * *

Third week. Arthur wasn’t sure which was worse: getting shot, or being in a plane trip back with somewhat-raw bullet wounds. They didn’t have much to bring, which was a blessing, and at least the government had the decency to get them first class tickets on the way back. The stewardesses took one look at him and offered all their help, but Arthur turned them all down with a subdued, though serviceable smile and a limp to his seat.

He slept through the entire flight. When he woke up, they were ten minutes from landing and there was a familiar jacket draped over his front—a familiar jacket that was _not_ his own.

(Though now Arthur lamented his poor sweater—it wasn’t his favourite, but he did love all his sweaters to a degree.)

“Back to the land of the living?” Francis asked, a genial smile on his face. The pressure in the cabin ratcheted up as they descended and Arthur jolted with a choked groan.

“Regretting it.”

By the time they landed, Francis had to bodily lead Arthur out.

 

Brecon was a nice little town, with great nature view and a calmness he couldn’t get in London, but the only reason why Arthur would go to such a place was Dylan.

“Such a quaint little place,” Francis commented as they walked down the small front garden with the rose bushes Flying Mint Bunny nibbled on. Arthur resisted the urge to immediately go down on his knees and inspect the damage—there was time for that later. “Your brother has good taste.”

Arthur looked up to take in the view too, now. Like everything other building in the town, it was painted in pale shades—it accentuated the red of the creeping roses, which mingled with the window boxes, which were overgrowing with wild flowers and weed. Arthur sighed. There was a lot of work to do here.

The door opened as they approached closer and Dylan was staring down at them, eyes twitching with a smile on his face. Arthur only raised his hand in a wave.

“Finally you two arrived. Do come in.”

Arthur could smell the sweet, full scent of Earl Grey and the delicious scent of Shepherd’s pie drifting from the kitchen. Even Francis perked up beside him, and Dylan wiped his wet hands on his ‘CHEESE THE COOK’ apron and snorted at them. Arthur could still see the smidgen of amused affection in his eyes, though, even as he rolled them and turned around.

“I made some pie, since _someone_ who hadn’t bothered to appear for four years decided to come over.”

Arthur swatted at him, freeing himself from the presence of the frog and into a more tolerable presence of his brother. Now that he thought about it, it had been a while since he cursed Francis’ existence. He couldn’t concede and say that Francis was a decent company. “Oh, bugger off. I had to suffer through a plane ride and hours in a car to get here, you better appreciate it you tyke.”

It was easy to fall back to this. Dylan was a tad more sarcastic than he was years ago, but the words weren’t vicious. The Earl Grey was perfect, as was the pie. Like the drugs in his system, the tension in his shoulders melted with each sip and bite and laugh. Despite the overcast sky, Arthur felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time—something not unlike warmth.

Francis smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> goodbye world  
> also most information here is only partially accurate. I reckon there is an Albanian Scrabble-- I just can't seem to find the letter scores so. Brecon is very pretty. Three weeks is an optimistic estimate of recovery. This is not britpicked.  
> francis is doomed.

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of split the Britannia character into two-- one was the mom, and one is basically the cold mother figure that is Arthur's boss. The Kirklands have a shitton of family problems.
> 
> Anyway. This is kind of going to be the first fic of a few-- basically this is the main short thing, and then I'll try to write more??? idk substantial fics in this verse later, probably. Expect prucan and rusame. Most likely not in this style-- I wanted a more MUNCLE-like fic which is more fleshed out but I'm too lazy to think right now sorry


End file.
